The Road to Dublin
Today, our 7th day, is a long travel day. We have to drive from Killarney, which is located at the southwestern tip of Ireland, to Dublin, which is located mid-center on the east coast. It’s a little more than a 3 hour drive, IF (1) you drive one of the only major freeways and (2) you don’t detour. Of course we intend to detour!
The first detour, again unplanned, was to Crag Cave in Castleisland, County Kerry. We saw the sign on the road and thought, why not? We visited Aillwee Cave in County Clare, so why not another cave towards the end of this trip? Discovered in 1983, Crag Cave is thought to be over 1 million years old.
We then stopped in Abbeyfeale at an Italian restaurant located in a pub for a late lunch. It was around 4 in the afternoon and we were, again, the only guests (it pays to be chronically late for everything!). We were too late for lunch and too early for dinner, but the friendly owner and chef, an immigrant from Italy, made us pasta dishes to order! Love those Italians!
May your pockets by heavy and your heart be light,
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.
Feeling glum that our trip is coming to an end, we can’t believe that it’s really not just beginning. Throughout, we have enjoyed amazing country scenery, warm, hospitable people, terrific food, and fabulous sites. Must it really end? We drive on to Dublin.
We arrive in Dublin at about 8:00 p.m. It is still daylight. Here’s the thing about Dublin. It is NOTHING like rural Ireland! A major sprawling city with 2 million people (population fact alluded to in the part about Cork’s population!), it is no more easy to navigate to novice tourists than a large American city would be for an Irish tourist. Our travel agent had suggested that we should turn our rental car into the rental car dealer as soon as we arrive in Dublin, and take public transportation while there. She is right because driving in Dublin is not for the faint of heart! However, we have no clue how to find the rental car dealership and we are hopelessly lost!
We decide to head for our hotel and deal with the car situation later. But, where the heck is our hotel? Signage in Dublin is minimal and complicated by lots of one-way streets. We roll down our window and ask a large, middle-aged Irishman dressed in a business suit, walking swiftly towards his intended destination, if he’d heard of our hotel. Well, of course he has! It’s right where he is going and he’s happy to direct us if he can come along! Without hesitation, Christin says yes – she’s already frazzled from the traffic and our complete lack of preparation for Dublin (we didn’t even have a city map and, if you remember, we left the GPS behind long ago).
Now also remember that our car, Big Bertha Goliath, is a very small Toyota Corolla and I have stuffed my 2 suitcases, one inside the other, in the back seat and they weight a ton! He climbs into the back seat, squeezing his very large body into this very small car and puts the very heavy suitcase on his lap, which leaves just enough room for his eyes to peer out over the suitcase and proceeds to direct us to our hotel! Well, we get there promptly, thanks to him, and he jumps out and is on his way!
But, the hotel has no parking lot or garage, so we have to find a nearby parking garage and lug our heavy suitcases down two blocks (remember my suitcase issue from day one?).
Rockin La Stampa
Our hotel, La Stampa is located in the heart of Dublin’s City Centre, so it couldn’t be anymore perfect from that perspective. A luxuriously appointed, young, hip, vibrant place with a middle-eastern influence, we check in and find out our room has only a queen size bed and NOT the “Ricky and Lucy” set up of our previous hotels! Disappointed, and our last night in Ireland, we want to get a good night’s rest. We ask if they have any other accommodations and they tell us the only other available room is out-of-service at this time because the air conditioning doesn’t work. They take us to see it and it is stifling hot and we decide that it’s not worth one of us suffering in order to have our own beds.
It’s late, of course, and we head down to La Stampa’s roaring bar which is full of young, beautiful people dressed in glittering dresses, sky-high heals and suits for the guys. Two rumpled California girls in jeans, tennis shoes and flip flops are sorely out of place, but we just don’t care. We head outside to one of the outdoor balconies and meet a gorgeous women from England who is out on the terrace having a smoke. She’s friendly and we strike up a conversation with her asking for her advise on what to do during our last day in Dublin. We tell her how we found the hotel by picking up a stranger and she admonishes us about doing so (rightly) and tells us that we should never, ever do that in London!
We eventually wander back to our room and settle in for the night, grateful for air-conditioning because it is darn hot in Dublin!
May the saddest day of your future be no worse
Than the happiest day of your past.
The End of the Road
The next morning, Day 8, we meet a taxi driver outside the hotel and convince him to caravan us to the rental car dealership so that we can turn in our car. He does, graciously, and then brings us back to Dublin’s City Centre. We are fortunate to have finagled this because it turns out that the rental car dealership is on the outskirts of town, near the airport (of course!). Anyway, he drops us off with some suggestions on how to spend our day and we make arrangements for his return to the hotel to take us to the airport later that evening.
In our remaining hours in Dublin, this is what we crammed in:
Christ Church Cathedral
Founded in 1030 by Sitric, King of the Dublin Norsemen, Christ Church Cathedral is the oldest and most recognized of Dublin’s landmarks. Visiting the Treasures of Christ Church exhibit, which houses 1,000 years of history, we are serenaded by the church choir (founded in 1480), during practice while we were visiting. An amazing complex given it’s age, major restorations have been on-going throughout the centuries. One of the most major contributions towards restoration came from Henry Roe in 1871-1878, who gave 230,000 pounds, which is equivalent to 30 million dollars today (a staggering sum of money, even by today’s standards! He was one very rich dude!).
A world of wishes at your command,
God and angels close at hand,
Friends and family their love impart,
And Irish blessings in your heart.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, founded in 1191, is the largest church in Ireland. A church has stood on this site since the 5th century, an astonishing bit of trivia if you can wrap your mind around that fact! The church as seen today was built around the 13th century, still an incredible piece of information. It, too, is an amazing structure, well-cared for despite its age.
Guinness Storehouse
Now that we had “gotten religion,” it was time to get a drink. Why not go straight to the source for the most famous export that Ireland offers? Off to the Guinness Storehouse, we take the museum tour that explains the 250 year brewing history of Guinness and the process of making this world-famous beer, known to Guinness connoisseurs as “black gold.” Arthur Guinness, a wily businessman, signed a 9,000 year lease on December 31, 1759. The St. James Gate Brewery occupies 60 acres of land in Dublin and produces a staggering 3 million pints of Guinness a day for the Irish, UK, European and US markets!
Ending our tour at the top of the 7-story pint-shaped building in the Gravity Bar, which has a 360 degree view of Dublin, we sip a free sample of the famous brew. The Gravity Bar was quite crowded, and since there was nowhere to sit, we didn’t stay long, but we walked around and looked at the view from all angles to see if we could recognize anything. We couldn’t!
Hop On Hop Off Tour
Recommended by our taxi driver, this “Hop On Hop Off” bus tour covers 23 historic and cultural sites including the following:
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O’Connell Street (Ireland’s widest street lined down the middle with statues commemorating many Irish heroes and the hub of the city centre shopping district) – I’ve never seen so many people in my life walking around; literally thousands!
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Dublin Tourism Centre (located in the restored St. Andrews Church, where we saw the “Tart with the Cart” (Molly Malone) statue
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Phoenix Park – now the largest urban park in Europe which includes the Dublin Zoo and the residence of the President of Ireland
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Liffey River – drive along this river through the Temple Bar District
As we take this tour, we are getting more and more depressed; we realize what we are missing by leaving in the next few hours. But, with both family and jobs in California, go we must. We hop off in a beautiful neighborhood full of brightly painted doors and have a very late lunch at an India food restaurant.
Back at our hotel, our taxi driver arrived just in time, as previously arranged, and this nice, friendly Irishman took us to the airport for our journey home.
I thought, but only for a split second, that I should make this post a series of posts rather than one very long story. But, we Irish are a bit long-winded, full of mischief and blarney {wink} and I found these two Irish proverbs to spur me on:
He who comes with a story to you, brings two away from you.
and this one…
Time is a great story teller.
I hoped you’ve enjoyed this exceedingly long post and here’s a special Irish blessing I’ve written just for you (and, there’s a second one that I wrote, buried in this story – see if you can find it!):
May you have good fortune throughout your days
And may shamrocks underfoot soften your way.
May the mischief of leprechauns fill your pot only with gold
And may you visit Ireland once in your life, it’s beauty to behold.
Where would you go if you had 8 days to visit someplace special?
I’d go back to Ireland.
Stay tuned in the future for a post called “The Road to Walmart.” It, too, is fun story of giggling and laughing and good times, only it takes place in Hawaii. And, yes, they have a Walmart in Hawaii. Been there. Done that.
Finally, my last and favorite (and very famous) Irish blessing to share with you:
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind always be at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Tootles and Happy St. Patrick’s Day,
Related Posts:
(check out these earlier posts for more pictures from my trip to Ireland):
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